GoKawiilWhether you’re a Samsung fan or an impartial Android observer, we can all agree that Samsung’s Exynos chipsets have had a rocky few years. The Galaxy S23 skipped Exynos entirely due to inconsistent performance, overheating, and poor efficiency, while the Galaxy S25 also sidelined it — likely influenced by Qualcomm’s major leap with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, alongside reported low yields from Samsung’s 3nm process.
The Exynos 2500 eventually surfaced in last year’s Z Flip 7, but that wasn’t a mainstream showing. But now that we have the Galaxy S26 series, complete with Exynos 2600, Samsung thinks its custom processor is ready to compete with the best in the business once more.
The most important question is, has Samsung solved the overheating issues? A look at benchmarks suggested Exynos might be slightly warmer, but I tested a handful of popular Android games to really find out: Asphalt Legends, Genshin Impact, and CoD Mobile. While I don’t have a Snapdragon Galaxy S26 for a direct comparison, I did grab the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-equipped Xiaomi 17 Ultra for comparison points.
And the results? They aren’t pretty.
Exynos 2600 real games test
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Performance looks reasonably solid, but there are some notes here. First, CoD Mobile is locked to 60fps, while rival handsets have 90fps or 120fps modes unlocked, making direct performance comparisons a little difficult. I can only assume this gap exists because the game detects this as a safe default limit. Secondly, the Asphalt Legends result shows greater variation in frames because it was a longer test run that allowed the temperature to reach very high levels. Let’s get into that.
The problem is two-fold: the Exynos 2600 seems to run warmer than other flagships I’ve tested this year, before we even load it up with games. While this could be down to internal thermal designs, I believe this is a partial problem at best — 7°C or so between idle temperatures is a chip-level difference. Even before loading a game, just flicking through menus and the home screen is enough to see the Galaxy S26 Plus’ internal temperature rise above 30°C, while my Snapdragon handsets typically remain below. Galaxy S26 Plus [Exynos 2600] Xiaomi 17 Ultra [8 Elite Gen 5] Temperatures in (°C) Start Temp Max Temp Mean FPS Start Temp Max Temp Mean FPS Asphalt Legends (3 minutes) 33.2 39.3 112.5 29 32.1 116.5 COD Mobile: BR (3 minutes) 32.0 36.8 59.9 34.2 36.1 118.6 Genshin Impact (3 minutes) 33.3 36.8 59.9 32.1 35.1 59.6 The second issue is that the S26 Plus also continues to heat up faster than rival handsets, though by how much depends on the game in question. In our examples, a three-minute race in Asphalt Legends sees the Exynos 2600 add 6°C to its starting temperature, compared to 3°C for my Snapdragon handsets. That’s not a huge discrepancy, but combined with higher temperatures overall, it’s easy to see how this could quickly become an issue.
These two trends also appear in the CoD Mobile and Genshin Impact tests, though less so in the latter. Temperatures rise by 4.8°C and 3.5°C, respectively, resulting in marginally higher temperatures than the rival handset after just a few minutes of play.
It’s again worth noting the frame rate caps, which is why I’ve included the frame rate results here as well. The Exynos 2600’s AMD Xclipse GPU is capped at just 60fps in CoD Mobile, which helps keep temperatures closer to the competition, despite rival devices actually rendering at a far more demanding 120fps. As such, it’s clear that capping frame rates at 60fps can help keep these temperatures (and power drain) under control, but this doesn’t appear to be a compromise we have to make to achieve comparable or better temperature performance with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
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